Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA) pres­i­dent, Am­bas­sador Den­nis Fran­cis, says Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­ci­sion to re­main neu­tral on the Venezuela pres­i­den­tial elec­tion im­passe is a “wise and prag­mat­ic” one.

Fran­cis was speak­ing hours af­ter he land­ed in T&T on Sun­day for a four-day vis­it, which saw him kick off his agen­da by meet­ing with the Min­is­ter of For­eign Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne and act­ing pres­i­dent Nigel de Fre­itas yes­ter­day. To­day, he will vis­it his al­ma mater, Wood­brook Sec­ondary School.

In a con­ver­sa­tion on The Big In­ter­view pro­gramme on Sun­day af­ter­noon, which is set to be aired this week­end on CNC3, T&T-born Fran­cis, who was elect­ed pres­i­dent of the UN­GA last June, said the de­ci­sions by gov­ern­ments, past and present, not to take a po­si­tion on the Venezuela is­sue is the right one.

In ref­er­ence to Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment over the week­end that the T&T Gov­ern­ment would not be tak­ing any po­si­tion on the elec­tion im­passe in Venezuela, Fran­cis said, “Neu­tral­i­ty is al­ways a good po­si­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a sit­u­a­tion of do­mes­tic con­flict. Why should any gov­ern­ment take a risk of be­ing seen to be aligned with one side as op­posed to the oth­er when the sit­u­a­tion can be very flu­id and change? I think the neu­tral­i­ty po­si­tion is a wise and prag­mat­ic one.”

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment event on Fri­day on the Venezuela is­sue, Row­ley said, “If there are chal­lenges to the re­sults in Venezuela, we will ob­serve the facts as they sur­face, but T&T will not be out there on any­body’s in­struc­tion, ring­ing any­body’s bell, and tak­ing any­body’s bush tea for a fever that we didn’t cre­ate.”

Not­ing the re­cent protests sparked by the re­sult, in which in­cum­bent Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has been de­clared the win­ner but the Op­po­si­tion says it has ev­i­dence to prove its can­di­date Ed­mun­do Gon­za­lez won, Fran­cis said what once looked like a po­lit­i­cal prob­lem is now look­ing like it is be­com­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al one.

“That’s a prob­lem for the Venezue­lan peo­ple to re­solve - not third par­ties. Third par­ties might as­sist and sup­port the process of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion but the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to fix it, to make it nor­mal, so that the coun­try can pro­ceed on its way, that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty rests in the hands of the Venezue­lan peo­ple and the au­thor­i­ties,” Fran­cis said.

The T&T na­tion­al, who has spent his life in diplo­ma­cy and took the oath as UN­GA pres­i­dent last Sep­tem­ber, said the in­ter­na­tion­al body will al­ways ad­vo­cate for democ­ra­cy and he hopes that Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties use in­sti­tu­tions such as the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) to work out their dif­fer­ences.

“What I would like to see is a de­lib­er­ate, clear-eyed ef­fort to re­solve the is­sue peace­ful­ly in or­der to avert the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a wider con­fronta­tion in Venezuela. That would not be good for Venezuela and it would not be good for Latin Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean and the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem,” he said.

The top T&T diplo­mat said there have been 55 con­flicts al­ready this year glob­al­ly and the world can­not af­ford any­more, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the Latin Amer­i­can re­gion.

On a sim­i­lar fron­tier, Den­nis al­so ad­dressed the lin­ger­ing ten­sion be­tween Venezuela and Guyana over the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion. The bor­der dis­pute was used in Maduro’s cam­paign in the build-up to the Ju­ly 28 elec­tion.

Fran­cis said he “takes com­fort” in the de­ci­sion by both na­tions to take their dis­pute to the ICJ for ad­ju­di­ca­tion.

“This is good for prob­lem solv­ing. It is when that process is not fol­lowed in con­flict, when coun­tries de­cide to go for broke and to launch mil­i­tary ac­tion, that is what be­comes prob­lem­at­ic be­cause that sets off a chain of events that im­pacts all coun­tries and all peo­ples,” Fran­cis added.

He is sched­uled to meet with Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley on this vis­it be­fore de­part­ing to­mor­row.